Lorraine Heath (2 page)

“Where in the hell is the damn doctor!” Dallas growled as he stared through the bedroom window. He’d sent his foreman into town to fetch the physician, but that had been over two hours ago.

“He’ll be here,” Amelia said softly. While Dallas had brought Austin home, with no help from the McQueen brothers, Houston had ridden to his house and fetched his wife and daughter. With the innocence of a child, Maggie had viewed coming to her uncle’s house in the dead of night as an adventure.

Dallas stalked to the bed where his brother lay, his eyes closed, his breathing shallow. He watched as Amelia wiped a damp cloth over Austin’s face. She’d stanched the flow of blood, but they needed the doctor to remove the bullet from Austin’s shoulder. It hadn’t come out the other side so Dallas could only assume it was embedded in his bone. He was lucky the bullet hadn’t dropped lower and gone through his heart. “He looks too pale.”

Amelia lifted her gaze to his. She had the prettiest green eyes he’d ever seen. He remembered a time when he’d thought he could easily fall in love with those eyes. Perhaps he had.

“I don’t think it’s as bad as when Houston got shot,” she said quietly.

“I’d feel a hell of a lot better if he’d wake up.”

She returned to her task of running the cloth over Austin’s brow. “He’d only feel the pain then.”

Better the pain than death. Dallas glanced at Houston who sat in a nearby chair, holding his own silent vigil, his daughter curled in his lap, asleep.

“I guess you think I should have handled this differently,” Dallas said.

“It makes no sense to me to build a town, hire a sheriff, and then
not
use him when you’ve got trouble.”

“I hired him to protect the citizens. I can handle my own trouble.”

“You can’t have it both ways, Dallas. If you bring the law out here, then you can’t be your own law.”

“I can be anything I damn well want to be. It’s my land. McQueen is going to learn to stay the hell off it, and I’ll teach him the lesson myself.”

“But at what cost?”

The words rang out loudly with concern. Dallas turned his attention back to his wounded brother. “Why don’t you tuck your daughter into my bed?” he suggested quietly to Houston.

“I’ll do that,” Houston replied as he easily brought himself to his feet, without waking Maggie. He walked from the room.

Dallas wrapped his hand tightly around the bedpost, searching for answers to his unfortunate dilemma. The McQueens had moved to the area three years ago, thinking they had purchased the land that ran along both sides of the river. Dallas suspected that the person who had sold them the land had been a land grabber. Land grabbing had been a common practice following the war. A man would buy a parcel of land and extend the boundaries as far as he wanted, often posting a notice in a newspaper to validate his claim. Although the practice usually worked, the notice was not legally binding. Dallas had filed claims with the land office for every acre of land he owned. Unfortunately, the McQueens seemed to believe—as many ranchers did—that a gun spoke louder than the law. They had refused to acknowledge Dallas’s deed to the acreage and had blatantly prodded their inferior stock into grazing over Dallas’s spread.

He wouldn’t have minded sharing his water or his grass if he didn’t need to control the breeding of his cattle so he could improve the quality of beef his cows produced.

He’d begun to put up his barbed-wire fence. If the McQueens had accepted that, Dallas would have left a portion of the river open to them. But they had torn down the fence before Dallas’s men had completed it. Irritating, but harmless. Dallas had paid a visit to Angus McQueen and demanded that he keep his sons tethered. Then Dallas had ordered his men to finish building the fence and to carry it beyond the river.

Two months ago, Angus McQueen’s sons had again destroyed a section of the fence, cutting the wire, burning the posts, and killing almost forty head of cattle, most on the verge of calving. Dallas had given Angus McQueen a bill for the damages that the man had refused to pay because Dallas couldn’t prove his sons had torn down the fence and murdered the cattle.

Dallas could certainly prove McQueens had cut his wire tonight, but as Houston had stated—at what cost?

Dallas held his thoughts and his silence when Houston returned to the room and took up his vigil in the chair beside the bed.

Dallas swung around as soft footfalls sounded along the hallway. Relief washed over him when Dr. Freeman shuffled into the room. The tall, thin man looked as though he were hovering on death’s doorstep himself. His bones creaked as he crossed the room without a word. He set his black bag on the bedside table and began to examine Austin’s wound.

“Where in the hell have you been?” Dallas demanded.

“Had to set Boyd McQueen’s arm.” Dr. Freeman glanced over his shoulder at Dallas and raised a thinning white brow, his steely gray eyes accusing. “Boyd said you broke it.”

Twin emotions twisted through Dallas’s gut: rage because McQueen had selfishly had the doctor tend to his needs, knowing all along that his bullet had slammed into Austin; and guilt because he hadn’t realized he’d broken Boyd’s arm when he’d dragged him through the river.

“Did McQueen tell you that he shot Austin?”

Dr. Freeman sighed. “No, I didn’t learn that bit of information until I returned home and found your foreman waiting for me.” Shaking his head, he began poking his fingers around Austin’s ravaged flesh. “You and the McQueens need to settle your differences before this whole area erupts into a range war.”

“Is Mr. McQueen going to be all right?” Amelia asked.

“Yes, ma’am. It was a clean break, and I left him in his sister’s care.”

Dallas stared at the doctor as though he’d just spoken in a foreign language. “Sister? Boyd McQueen has a sister?”

“Yep. Shy little thing,” Dr. Freeman said absently as he opened his black bag. “Hear tell, she spent most of her growing-up years tending to her ailing mother. Reckon she spent so much time being forced to stay at home that she never thinks to leave now that she’s grown.

“How grown?” Dallas asked.

“What?”

“I mean how old is she?”

“Twenty-six.”

“Twenty-six?” Dallas repeated.

Dr. Freeman jerked around and glared at Dallas. “Do I need to check your hearing before I leave?”

“I just didn’t know McQueen had a sister.”

“Well, now you know. Go get some more lanterns and lamps so I can have enough light in here to dig this bullet out.”

A few hours later Dallas watched his youngest brother as he lay sleeping, his shoulder swathed in bandages. Dr. Freeman had assured Dallas that Austin was in no danger. He’d be sore, weak, and cranky, but he would survive. Still, Dallas decided he’d feel a lot more confident with the doctor’s prognosis if Austin would awaken.

Dallas assumed Houston held the same concerns. Houston had convinced Amelia to sleep with Maggie while he sat on the opposite side of the bed, never taking his gaze off Austin.

When dawn’s feathery fingers eased into the room, Austin slowly opened his eyes. With a low groan, he grimaced. Dallas eased forward. “You in much pain?”

“That worthless bastard shot me in the shoulder,” Austin croaked. “How am I gonna play my violin?”

“You’ll find a way,” Dallas assured him.

“When … I’m strong enough … I say we run ’em off their land.” Austin’s eyes drifted closed.

“Dallas?”

Dallas met Houston’s troubled gaze.

“Dallas, you’ve got to do something to stop this feuding. Dr. Freeman is right. Next time, we might not be so lucky, and I don’t want my family caught in the middle.” Houston shifted uncomfortably in the chair. “I
won’t
have my family caught in the middle. If I have to choose—”

“You won’t have to choose. I’ve been pondering the situation, and I think I might have a solution to our problem. I’ll schedule a meeting with Angus McQueen and see if we can come to some sort of compromise.”

“Good.” Houston stood, planted his hands against the small of his back, and stretched backward. “I’m going to get a little sleep.” He started walking across the room.

“Houston?”

Houston stopped and turned.

Dallas weighed his words. “Do you think McQueen’s sister is as mean-spirited as he is?”

“What difference does it make?” Houston asked.

Dallas glanced at Austin’s pale face. “No difference. No difference at all.”

“By God, you have no right!” Angus bellowed.

Leaning back, Dallas planted his elbows on the wooden arms of his leather chair. He steepled his long fingers and pressed them against his taut lips. Narrowing his dark brown eyes, he glared at the spittle that had flown from McQueen’s mouth and plopped onto the edge of his mahogany desk. He could imagine it sliding along the front of his desk like a slug slipping out at night to coat the land in slime.

Slowly, he raised his eyes to his adversary’s. “I have every right to fence in my land,” he said calmly.

“But you fenced in the river!”

“It’s on my land. Any rancher of sound reputation would side with me. None would blame me for stringing up your sons from the nearest tree. We have an unwritten code that most cattlemen honor. Once a man has a valid claim to a river or a water hole, another cowman won’t come within twenty-five miles of it—with or without a fence. No one would have questioned my right to take the fence back farther, but I graciously left miles of land open to grazing.”

“To taunt us. I don’t need grassland, damn you! I need water!”

“You have creeks and rivers on your land.”

“I’ve got nothing but dry creek beds.”

Dallas shook his head in sympathy. “I can’t help that Nature chose to dry up your water supply and left mine flowing, but I don’t part with anything of mine freely.”

McQueen’s face turned a mottled shade of red. It occurred to Dallas that the man might have an apoplexy fit right here in his office. Then Dallas would never get what he wanted.

“Freely,” Angus muttered. “You won’t part with your water freely, but you will part with it for a price. Is that what this meeting is about? Is that why you fenced in the river? So you could get something for the water? Isn’t it enough that you stole my land?”

“I’ve owned that stretch of land since 1868.”

Angus snorted. “So you say.”

“The law backs my claim,” Dallas reminded him.

Angus released a harsh breath. “Then name your price for the water, and I’ll pay it. What do you want? Money? Cattle? More land?”

Dallas lowered his hands to his lap, the fingers of his right hand stroking the ivory handle of the gun strapped to his thigh. He should have insisted this meeting be held without weapons in tow.

“I have money. I have cattle. I have land. I want something that I don’t have. Something as
precious
as the cool water. Something as
beautiful
as the flowing river.” Giving his words a moment to echo inside McQueen’s head, he tightened his hand around the gun. “Something as
pure
as the sun-glistened water.”

Angus shook his head. “You’re talking in riddles. I don’t have anything that’s pure or precious or beautiful.”

“I’ve heard you have a daughter,” Dallas said, wishing he hadn’t needed to be quite so blunt.

The furrows that ran across McQueen’s brow deepened. “Yes, I have a daughter, but I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

Dallas was beginning to question the wisdom of holding his meeting with Angus, wondering if it might have been better to discuss the particulars of his compromise with Boyd. “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but women are scarce. I need a w—”

“My God! You can’t be serious!” McQueen yelled, his eyes bulging from their sockets.

“I’m dead serious.”

Angus slumped in his chair. “You’ll give me access to your water if I give you access to my daughter?”

With a speed Dallas never would have expected of the rotund man, Angus lunged across the desk and grabbed Dallas’s shirt. Dallas brought the gun from his holster and jabbed it into the folds of Angus’s neck, but the man was apparently too angry to notice. Spittle spewed into Dallas’s face.

“I’ll see you dead first,” Angus growled.

“That won’t get you the water,” Dallas said in an even voice.

“I won’t give you my daughter as a whore!” “I don’t want her as a whore. I want her as my wife.”

Angus McQueen blinked. “You want to marry her?”

“Is there a reason that I shouldn’t?”

Angus dropped into the chair. “You want to marry Cordelia?”

Cordelia? He was going to pull his fence back for a woman named Cordelia? Where in the hell had McQueen come up with that name?

“You don’t even know her,” McQueen said.

Dallas leaned forward. “Look, McQueen, we’ve been arguing over that strip of land for three years now. The law says it’s mine and gives me the right to fence in and protect what’s mine. Your sons killed my cattle—”

“You can’t prove it—”

“Two nights ago, they damn near killed my brother. I went to war when I was fourteen. I’ve fought Yankees, Indians, renegades, outlaws, and now I’m fighting my neighbors.” Dallas sank into his chair. “I’m tired of fighting. Angus, I need a son to whom I can pass my legacy. I need a wife to give me a legitimate heir. The pickin’s around here are slim—”

Angus came out of the chair and pounded a fist on the desk. “The pickin’s? If I were ten years younger I’d pound you into the dirt for thinking so lowly of my daughter.”

“I think very highly of her because I respect her father. We’re both working hard to carve an empire from desolate land, and we’re both on the verge of destroying all we’ve attained. Barbed wire is part of the future. I put it up, you tear it down. I’m going to keep putting it up.” He took a deep breath, ready to play his final hand. “But tomorrow at dawn, I’m giving my men orders to shoot to kill anyone who touches my wire or trespasses on my land.”

“You are a son of a bitch,” Angus snarled.

“Maybe, but I’ve poured my heart and soul into this ranch. I’m not going to let you destroy it. Marrying your daughter will give us a common bond.”

“You don’t even know her,” Angus repeated, bowing his head. “She’s—”